New York

By Taylor Williams The New York City retail market is currently functioning like an episode of The Price Is Right. Developers, investors, brokers and operators are all trying to attach fair values to rents and sales prices for spaces of all sizes and submarkets. But after a tumultuous period marked by a global pandemic and record inflation, followed by a string of severe interest rate hikes, accurately assigning those numbers is easier said than done — at least in some submarkets. According to data from JLL, at the end of the third quarter, the average rent throughout New York City was $290 per square foot, down 5.3 percent year over year. That figure represents an improvement from the second quarter of 2022, when rents posted a 12 percent decline on a year-over-year basis. In addition, JLL’s data shows that 58 new leases were signed in the third quarter. While that figure marks a decline of 13 percent from the second quarter, it also constitutes an increase of 7.4 percent on a year-over-year basis.  These numbers suggest that after retail leasing and sales completely stagnated in 2020 due to an unprecedented public health crisis, the market corrected sharply in 2021 and …

By Brent Glodowski, director, capital markets group, Avison Young Conditions are looking up for retail real estate investment in New York City.  In one sense, “up” is the only way to go for a sector that has been bumping along the bottom of a trough. But with inflation tempering investors’ recent fascination with multifamily and industrial properties, retail also offers opportunities to acquire price-corrected assets when those other property types hover near cyclical peaks. Retail’s Head Start New York’s retail real estate market was already suffering from changing consumer tendencies when COVID-19 arrived and thrust many retailers and their landlords into a full-blown crisis. Even when government-ordered shutdowns eased, remote work policies drained office buildings of the customer bases that had supported swaths of restaurants, shops and entertainment businesses. Home-bound workers became a redistributed daytime population, shifting demand for meal delivery and other retail to new areas. Hundreds of small businesses went under, leaving vacant storefronts in their wake. Some retailers altered business plans to serve shifting customer bases that had developed new, pandemic-influenced consumption practices.  Landlords with vacancies to fill turned to traditional strategies, such as relocating tenants from out-of-the-way spaces to fill their most visible storefronts. Property owners …

By Joe Aquino, president, JAACRES When Barneys New York department store closed in 2020, we saw a dramatic relocation of luxury retail on Madison Avenue to the south, apparently with a common goal of establishing better proximity to East 57th Street. Prior to that event, many luxury brands enjoyed a shop within a shop at Barneys, plus another store on the corridor, usually further uptown. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, this stretch of Madison Avenue was so tight for space that we saw East 59th Street, a major side street, securing tenants like Dior, Bathing Ape and Balmain. During the pandemic’s lockdown phases, retail vacancy rose dramatically, even in the most desirable areas. Now, post-pandemic, we see spaces along Madison Avenue getting filled by new and established luxury retailers ready to make a statement. Here are some of the key transactions that have either been recently completed or are in progress: Givenchy just left its cozy quarters at 749 Madison Ave. at the southeast corner of 65th Street to take the southeast corner at 625 Madison Ave. Versace will open in Givenchy’s place this fall. Wolford, a maker of luxury seamless tights, took the Lalique store at 607 Madison Ave. …